More unemployment aid pushed

With members of the CNMI community still struggling to get back to their feet due to lack of jobs because of the closure of tourism-related industries as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the CNMI Department of Labor is right now working on possibly extending unemployment assistance.

According to Labor Secretary Vicky Benavente, although the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program already ended last week, DOL continues to report job losses due to business closures to the U.S. Department of Labor in an attempt to plead their case that extended unemployment assistance is crucial to the CNMI community.

“We are reporting these numbers and this data to USDOL and we are trying to work something out but I won’t mention what we’re trying to work out until we get confirmation from our federal partners,” she said.

“Tough is an understatement. It’s going to be really hard to get jobs until our tourism industry comes back and we’re really pushing the fact that the CNMI, as a destination, is safe for our market, particularly South Korea, Japan, and China. It really depends on our destination market. We just need to continue to keep our islands safe and our people safe and hopefully our destination markets will come back because without that, our tourism industry will continue to be stagnant and many people will still be out of jobs,” she added.

Benavente said employment opportunities in construction and retail have increased but, again, with hotel and transportation, until tourism completely opens back up, the CNMI won’t see these industries pick up.

Meanwhile, Benavente shared some insight on DOL’s experience with the first implementation of PUA and the experience was tough, to say the least.

“We have learned many lessons. Let me first repeat the fact that when we were given approval to proceed with the PUA program in March 2020 and opened in June 2020, that gave us 90 days to create and implement a program that usually takes two years to actually build from scratch. The experience taught us that preparation, communication, and cooperation is key,” she said.

“When you ask me what the experience was like, it was difficult, and I’m sure it has been difficult for our people who have been waiting for PUA benefits, waiting because they didn’t understand the program requirements or they didn’t understand why they had to get letters and check stubs. It was a difficult procedure,” she added.

Despite the difficulties, Benavente said DOL learned a lot and hopes to improve the program for future implementations.

“I want to say that we have some lessons under our belt but we still have a long way to go with regards to making this program a bit more easy to implement and to make it easier for our people to be assisted, so we’re still working on our process and learning what works and what doesn’t. A big shout out to [those] who have been so patient with us, who have conformed to all the requirements, a big shout out to those who are also under a lot of stress and are hurting because they lost a job or reduction in hours. There’s a lot of them but they still continue to be polite and to be patient, and shout out to the community for supporting the CNMI in its endeavors to implement this program to our people,” she said.